Sunday, December 31, 2006

The default colour scheme for PowerShell RTM relies on the defaults for cmd.exe, namely white text on background, and a relatively small window. I prefer to change the defaults in my profile.ps1 file as follows:

As you can see, you set the basic colours with $host.ui.rawui properties, but set the error/warning colours using $host.privatedata properties. If you want to see what the colours look like for errors or warnings, you can use write-warning and write-error cmdlets as shown in this screenshot:

The 1.9mb download is an executable setup program for a a Windows-based USB Stick Format Utility. The utility is meant to be able to create a bootable USB stick. However It looks like this feature does not work on all memory sticks. The HP site says it is only available on specific HP devices (Drive Key or DiskOnKey) when running on a range of Compaq desktop systems. But I ran the utility on a Dell laptop and used two old sticks I had lying around. I could format both sticks, but only one as bootable.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Mark is a well known Windows Guru and now a Microsoft employee. His talks are usually outstanding - or often better. If you did not go to IT Forum see IT Forum's recorded webcast site. It has these gems:

Advanced Malware Cleaning: Learn how to use the Sysinternals tools to identify malware infestations, including standard spyware and kernel-mode rootkits, and clean them off your system.

Windows Vista User Account Control Internals: This session looks inside User Account Control (UAC), explaining the technologies involved, their role and how they work. The talk concludes with a look at how UAC will affect the evolution of malware.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

I think this is pretty cool - a set of additional PowerShell projects including:

PowerShell Community Extensions- Windows PowerShell is a new, object-oriented command shell developed by Microsoft. With the first version of PowerShell Microsoft is focusing on implementing a core set of features.

VS Command Shell - VSCmdShell provides users with a shell window inside Visual Studio IDE that can be used for Visual Studio commands as well.

PowerShell Scripts for Testing - PowerShell Scripts for Testing is a function library for PowerShell, Microsoft's .NET scripting language. The library brings xUnit-style assertions such as Assert and AssertEquals to PowerShell.

PowerShell SharePoint Provider - A full PowerShell provider for exposing SharePoint 2003 [version 2007 coming] as a file system. Administer your SharePoint installation with familiar copy/move/rename/delete and new-item metaphors. Move users between roles, copy users between webs; use the full power of the shell to script away the pain of GUI based mass-management.

I just discovered KB article KB 917607. Windows help is a help program that's been around a long time. It enables access to help files stored on older .hlp file format.

Unfortunately, says the KB article, WinHlp no longer "meets Microsoft Standards" (although the particular standards are not mentioned). For this reason, it has been removed from Vista. Worse, the KB states that venders are prohibited from distributing the help application. So if you have an application that works fine under XP and uses the older .HLP file format for help - the help will not work under Vista. Worse, MS is prohibiting the application vendor from helping you.

But as I read on, users will be able to download a version of the WinHlp code. One small thing: according to the KB article, this application is not ready yet and will be provided some time in early 2007. Or so the KB article claims.

I think of all those older corporate apps using older help files that will now not seamlessly work on Vista. Is MS trying to stop businesses from upgrading to Vista? This is more proof, if proof is actually needed, that Vista was released before it's ready.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

I've documented previously how to get PowerShell to run on Vista. It's a simple hack, but as I've said before, it's unsupported. But it works and I'm using this approach on my laptop, which is now running Vista. I also have a shortcut to PowerShell in my quick launch window to the right of the Start button.

One thing I discovered is that, like all programs, Vista runs PowerShell sans privileges. Thus when I opened PowerShell to look at the BCDEDIT program, I found BCDEDIT simply gave me the error:

The boot configuration data store could not be opened.Access is denied.

The reason is UAC. Under Vista, PowerShell is running, by default, without admin rights, thus I get the access denied error. Some will argue that this is a good thing, but as the admin,I want to run PowerShell as an admin! But I do appreciate MS looking after me, but I know what I'm doing . UAC is a great feature, but it does not learn. Why should some programmer in Redmond decide what I need to be protected from? I've only been using MS products for 25 years, and in all that time, have never come across the malware Redmond wants to protect me from. But enough of the anti-UAC rant.

The solution to this problem is simple - just adjust the shortcut that starts PowerShell. Right click the shortcut, and select properties. On the Compatibility tab, at the bottom, select "Run this program as an administrator". I'm unclear why MS decided to put this option on the Compatibility tab but I suppose some Program Manager thought it a good idea.

The only downside is that each time you run PowerShell, you get the dreaded black screen and get asked for permission to run PowerShell as admin. Additionally, although it may be a byproduct of the hack I used to get PowerShell running - Vista can't identify the publisher. It suggests the program is "unidentified" - a feature I hope MS will get fixed when they eventually release PowerShell for Vista.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

If you read the technical press, they are forecasting Vista adoption to be slow, at least in the corporate space. While that may be true, it hasn't stopped the scammers from getting onto the bandwagon. I'm getting 5-10 spam mails a day offering me the opportunity to download Vista Enterprise. I'm getting nearly as many of these as I am winning lottery mails.

One particular site has very attractive price of$79.75 for Vista Ultimate (RRP is closer to $320). Now of course that price can't be right, but I suspect that such prices will attract buyers! But I can't imagine this site is selling legal copies - for that matter, I wonder if the buyer actually gets anything (but his CC number heavily debited). Have you known anyone to get things from this site that are legal??

Assuming this is a scam site, I can't understand why MS hasn't closed this down. Or some of the other vendors whose products are being offered so cheaply for that matter. Of course, maybe I am wrong and this site is totally legit. But as my grandpa used to say: anything that seems too good to be true usually isn't.

MS has delayed a working version of PowerShell on Vista until the consumer launch at the end of January. I found this very disappointing although I'll agree it is not the end of the world. The reason for the delay is not really a technical one (as in Vista supports PowerShell just fine!), but a legal one.

The ingenuity of the community to figure a way around the legal issues is quite impressive. I'm glad to say I'm running Vista RTM on my laptop and have PowerShell RTM working just fine.

Monday, December 11, 2006

This is a sad story. According to PC Magazine,half of the business computers in the US can't run Vista, and 94% can't run Vista Premium. OUCH!

Most of this problem is lack of RAM. Vista requires a lot - and while MS may say 512MB is OK, I'd not want to run a Vista box in less than 2GB. The remainder of the issue relates to the graphic card not being Aero-Glass capable. Frankly, I can't see that Glass is all that important in a business context.

PC Magazine concludes that the huge jump in system requirements (from what XP needed) will be a significant barrier to adoption.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

In a blog post on the PowerShell Team blog, Jeffrey Snover commits to releasing a version of PowerShell for Vista by the end of January 2007. The issue stopping this from happening sooner is that the installer is not working properly just yet.

It's a shame that PowerShell is not supported yet on Vista, but there are hacks around that enable you to get the support in the mean time. So while it's regrettable, it's understandable and not the end of the earth.

The year ahead is going to see a huge range of new technology being released. But I suspect that some of it will see slow takeup. I've been using Vista, for example, as my main OS for nearly a fortnight. Vista has recorded 51 'problems' back to MS with no 'solutions' and the Reliability Index of this system is 5.57. Vista, for me at least, is not really ready for business use - but that's mainly a feature of application compatibility and driver support.

But while uptake of Vista may be slow in the business market, there are other releases that businesses may love: such as Office SharePoint server and the updated version of Live Communications Server. And the new System Center Essentials product looks incredibly exciting for smaller businesses.

What's that Chinese saying: may you live in interesting times. From where I sit, 2007 looks like being a very interesting year!

I've just seen that Microsoft has given Software Update Services (SUS) another lease of life, and has announced an extension to the end of support date - July 10th 2007. The idea is to give customers more time to migrate off of SUS.

Additionally, a beta version of the next release, WSUS 3.0 is available for evaluation. WSUS 3.0 is expected to be released "in the first half of calendar year 2007." That's MS speak for sometime in late June. I'd bet that the announcement will take place at TechEd on Orlando, but that's only my guess and it not a commitment from MS! You can get more information about the WSUS 3.0 beta 2 at http://www.microsoft.com/wsus

Monday, December 04, 2006

Last Thursday, I posted more information about Get-PSUGUK, the UK's PowerShell user group and our upcoming first meeting. This morning I got a blog comment asking two questions. First, there has been a typo in one part of the post - Get-PSUGUK's first meeting will indeed be held on January 24th 2007 (and not 2006 as I'd mistakenly typed!).

Second, the question asks what sort of experience you need to come along. Great question Tim - and my initial view is that the only experience you need is an enthusiasm to learn more. I hope to see folks at all levels of experience. We're quite deliberately not slanting the user group towards any specific area or level of expertise - so whether you are a developer or IT Pro, a newbie, or one of the folks in the audience at PDC 2003 (where Jeffrey Snover first presented PowerShell) it shouldn't matter.

With respect to the first meeting, the core talk Richard and I are planning is around Installation and basic Configuration as well as a quick look at some of the add-on tools such as PowerGadgets. I would hope that everyone gets something out of this meeting - and if you are more experienced, come along and teach the rest of us!

Sunday, December 03, 2006

I came across an interesting article entitled Customizing Windows PowerShell. It's a little rambling, but it looks at some cool ways you can customise PowerShell's look and feel. It discusses customising the built-in display XML files to change the way PowerShell displays things. In order to make this work, the author looks at how you can re-sign these files.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

I use Windows Live Writer as my principal blogging tool. It has a neat feature which detects your blog's look and feel - it's style. LW then emulates that style as you are using LW to create or edit a blog post. This is a neat feature that I personally like a lot.

At first sight, this may appear to be a low number of users. But in order to have been picked up, either your blog is be hosted on an "when it's updated, we'll ping someone..." type site or you have configured LW to ping some blogging service. So I suspect that it vastly undercounts the number of LW users, but it's certainly fun to watch. From the look of the stats as I was creating this post, the hits keep rolling in!

With the release of Vista, Microsoft has produced a document entitled Windows Vista Product Guide. The Guide is 316 pages of details on what is in the released version of Vista. You can download this either in docx or xps format.

But a word of warning: the document is HUGE - the word DOCX file is 61.3MB. IIRC, that's around 2/3 of the size of the I386 folder of Windows NT 3.1. :-)

I've had a small PowerShell related subsite at http://www.reskit.net/monad. As the name might indicate, the subsite has been up for a while and it's in need of updating.

I've now put up http://www.reskit.net/powershell, and a forwarding page at the old web address that points to this new subsite. I've also updated some of the content. I'll be updating this page more in the next week - it's been a good test of the new SharePoint Web Designer product whcih is part of Office 2007.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Microsoft is running a competition around scripting. Submit a PowerShell script that carries out some system administration task in Windows - and the winners get come cool prizes. The only stipulation is that the script must do something more than just call some PowerShell cmdlet.

As I noted yesterday, PowerShell RTM is not yet available from Microsoft for use with Vista RTM. The PowerShell team made some changes late in the game, and the installer for Vista is not ready. This is dissapointing to me as I'm running Vista RTM and really want to get PowerShell going!

The lack of a working installer, however hasn't stopped enerprising geeks from finding a way to do it (and sharing it).

On the XP box, search for the 5 key DLLs noted in Fermin's postt. These will be in the GAC on the XP box. You need to copy each of these to the C:\Windows\System32\windowspowershell\v1.0 folder on your Vista computer.

Add each of these DLLs to the GAC on your Vista computer, using GACUTIL. You will need to download the .NET SDK and install it to get the GACUTIL comamnd.

In an earlier blog post, I posed some questions surrounding a PowerShell User Group for the UK. After talking about this with Richard Siddaway and a few others, I have some initial answers, set out below. The good news is that we are moving ahead to form a UK PowerShell User Group.

It's important to note that what follows is just the starting point for the group and is a way of getting it going. Nothing is set in stone, and all the decisions can easily be changed if that's what is wanted.

Who are we?

Keeping with the PowerShell approach to naming, the group is called Get-PSUGUK. Get-PSUGUK is a user group open to anyone with an interest in PowerShell - including administrators and developers. The group should be broadly independent of Microsoft, but closely aligned.

Who runs it?

Richard has assumed the role of Chairman and I'm acting as vice-Chairman. We are trying to keep the user group informal, which means no legal status, at least at present!

We meet every couple of months, midweek after working hours to discus PowerShell. We may also run some on-line events if this is something members want. The group will also have a web site, and if we can find someone to take it on, a newsletter.

Where do we meet?

We've decided to hold the first meeting on January 24th 2006 at Global Knowledge's office in Wokingham starting at 18:00. There will be a bit of beer and pizza, sponsored by the PowerGadgets people. The meeting will be free, but open to the first 25 members who register. Future meetings can be held at Microsoft (Reading, London) and Perot Systems in Nottingham - plus anywhere else we can get free meeting space.

How do I join?

To become a member, just send a mail to PowerShell-UK@Hotmail.co.UK with your name and a working email address. Currently there is no fee to join or to attend meetings.

Our First Meeting

As noted, the first meeting will be at Global Knowledge on 24th January 2007. The draft agenda is:

Discussion on organisation (15 minutes max)

Discussion of installation and configuration of PowerShell and install fest (60 minutes max)

Beer pizza (30 minutes)

A presentation on PowerShell tools (TBA)

Round up and planning for the next meeting (25 min max)

Be sure to bring your laptops along and we'll help you to get PowerShell up and running for you.

For legal reasons,PowerShell RTM on Vista RTM is not yet available. However, for an enterprising techie, hand installing is not a big deal as this blog post shows. Basically, you copy over code from and XP system and do some registry hacking.

Naturally this is NOT supported, nor is it particularly recommended even if it does work!

And if you are a PowerShell Fan in the UK, pencil in the evening of January 24th. More details to follow.

I've now upgraded to Office 2007, and I'm finding some minor compatibility issues when I send documents. The issue, recipients are using Office 2003 which does not have native support for the new document formats, is resolved with theMicrosoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. You can download this27mb program and run it to enable support for the updated document formats within Office 2003.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Yet another part of the EVO story, the Windows Automated Installation Kit, has now been released. The WAIK, says Microsoft "helps you to install, customize, and deploy the Microsoft Windows Vista™ family of operating systems."

As you can see, I have a hit counter in the right column of the blog. Its a free counter provided by sitemeter.com Last week, I noticed the counter had hit 50,000 - but suddenly it's dropped to 49,000. A quick look at hits/day graph, at http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s16tfl09&r=12 shows a huge drop - with zero hits over the past couple of days. And the summary shows the averages have been reset, or something.

NO idea what's up

[Later]

Now the counter is not displaying here and the statistics are empty. :-(

Based on the great feedback here, and support in email, we can move forward - so thanks for your input. Culminis is also being highly supportive which should make it easier to get the user group off the ground - they have offered to supply some web space for the group as well as lots of support. Thanks!!

Richard and I are meeting this week to discuss details, but I am hopeful we can get organise an inaugural meeting for sometime in January. My firm, Global Knowledge, has kindly allowed me to use the canteen at our Wokingham offices (and I am hopeful that I might be able to twist some arms to get them to supply the beer and pizza), at least for the first meeting. We can hold 20-30 people which is probably as many as I'd expect at first.

I've also spoken to Microsoft, who are happy to get Jeffrey over to talk to the group once we get it up and functioning - so that's pretty cool. We'll probably need a bigger space for Jeffrey's talk, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. If you work for a company that can offer the group space for an evening meeting, and better yet the beer/pizza, please let me know - all offers most welcome.

Once we agree on the date for the first meeting, I'll post it here and anywhere else we can find to do so, along with details on how to join in the fun.

Feel free to leave comments to this post concerning what you'd like to see at a UKPSUG meeting, what you'd like to see/do, what information you might like to see on the web site, and any other comments you might have around the activities of this group. Here a set of areas in which comments are most welcome:

What sort of an organisation is this? By this I mean what is it's legal status if any? Does it even matter?

Who runs it? How should we organise ourselves? Should we have a committee, with a committee chair, and a couple of other officers? Or do we need some other organisational structure?

Who pays for it? A user group does cost something to run-if only to pay for the beer and pizza. And of course the second you start to talk about money, the first two points above take on much greater importance. With money comes governance, etc.

Where, when, and how do we meet? What do folks what? Monthly seems ambitious, but with enough extra volunteers to help out it could be done. Maybe once every two months? I'd also suggest we meet in the evenings, mid week in a space to be provided.

What does it actually do? I see it as providing a community for PowerShell users in the UK. That would include regular meetings, some web space, and a strong pointer back toward the MS PowerShell news group (where the product team and MVPs hang out).

What does it offer and to whom? I see it providing some help and support to anyone in the UK that wants to get more out of PowerShell. I'd hope that members will come to the web site, come to the meetings, and come to the newsgroup to share problems, solutions and fun.

There are probably more things to think about - so comments are most welcome.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

I got talking at IT forum to Richard Siddaway, a consultant with Perot Systems. We discussed his great idea of a UK PowerShell Users Group. We also chatted to the folks at Culminis who were highly supportive and to a few folks at Microsoft UK. It sure seems a great idea to start up a user group around PowerShell - focused on both developers and admins.

As a teaser, Jeffrey Snover, Powershell's architect (and a very smart man!!!), has agreed to come to and speak to us, if we can get the group going. And I am hopeful we can both get Microsoft interested (Eileen - are you reading this blog??) and can hold some events at Global Knowledge's offices in Wokingham.

Do YOU want a UK Powershell user group?? If so, either drop me a line or post a comment here. Once we get to 10 people saying "YES", we can kick things off.

Microsoft released Windows Vista to the MSDN and Connect sites on Friday of this week. I managed to kick off my download Friday morning (Barcelona time) and finished it off by Saturday Morning UK time. It would have downloaded faster had I not been travelling, but for me it did not really matter as I'm simply to jammed to actually install it.

However, it looks like Microsoft has underestimated the load that the download would create. It appears that the X64 edition as been temporarily pulled, and some MSDN customers say they can's see the X86 version either.

It would be easy to point out the MOF Capacity Management SMF (ITIL has a simlilar SMF), but it would be unfair. I suspect that no matter how much bandwidth/servers MS chucked in, the load would still be high. And besides, this is the first time so much software has been released via the web all at once.

Hopefully, the uber-geeks will have their copies by Monday when the corporate MSDN customers come in to work and want to resume the download.

As an aside, I saw around 10 people yesterday in Barcelona (IT Forum) trying to download. It sure would have been a good idea to have placed an MSDN cache in the IT Forum communication network.

Friday, November 17, 2006

It's early in the morning in Barcelona after yet another late night party at TechEd. While I slept, Microsoft flipped the switch and Vista RTM is on the MSDN site, as well as on the Connect site (for beta testers), and probably elsewhere.

Being the guy I am, I immediately hit MSDN and the DVD is being downloaded now. I'm in the hotel, using the 'b' wireless and I'm getting download speed in the region of 150-175 KB/Sec. Not shabby! I wonder just how much bandwidth and how many download servers MS has dedicated to this download?

Thursday, November 16, 2006

As I reported in an earlier blog post, Microsoft launched Windows PowerShell earlier today at IT Forum in Barcelona. The PowerShell team (well that part of the team that was in Barcelona) was kind enough to host the PowerShell MVPs to dinner tonight at Posit in Barcelonetta - where we got a cool USB stick complete with the RTM code. Naturally, the first thing I did when I got back to my room was to try to install it!

But as I took the cab back to my hotel, I realised that we've seen something a bit special here - a product team with a real difference. Over the 3 years since I first saw Jeffrey Snover demonstrate PowerShell at PDC 2003 (I was the guy in the middle of the room waving a US$20 bill and shouting "I'll buy it NOW!!"), the product has changed a great deal as it has made it to RTM. But throughout the entire time, there was one thing that remained constant - the team's approach to the community and to the beta testers.

To my mind, every team at Microsoft should be like the Powershell team. The team's members are open, decisions are being made in an utterly transparently way, and community input is both welcomed and acted on. Almost since day 1, the team went out of their way to seek community input - they asked for input and responded when it was offered. The beta newsgroups had some of the most intellectually stimulating discussions I've ever seen in any beta product newsgroup. When there were hard choices to make, the team often asked the beta testers what they thought. Sometimes the beta testers provided a better answer, but sometimes not. Irrespective of which side was 'right' the team always took the best answer. And throughout, the goal was very clear - to make PowerShell a great product. I believe that is precisely what they did!

So after over three long years when, at times, I wondered if this puppy would ever ship - they finally did. They've shipped a great product that pretty much every Windows admin will be using sooner or later (sooner in the case of Exchange 2007). Of course this is just one stop in the longer journey - more versions are no doubt being planned just now!

So thanks Jeffrey, Leonard, Arul, for a great dinner tonight, and thanks too to every member of the Powershell team. Thanks for doing such a great job building such a great product. Thanks for taking the time to listen, and respond. And thanks for being such a great example of how to run a dev team. I can't wait for the next beta!

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Having acquired Sysinternals, Microsoft has now provided the full Systinternals suite of tools for free download. This is in addition to the recently released Process Monitor that combines several tools which is also available for free download.

Microsoft clearly has both a sense of humour - the BSOD screen has fooled more than one admin! But there are other really useful tools availalable, including Zoomit.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Yet another part of the EVO trilogy has made it to release: the .NET 3.0 Framework has been released. This is a core part of Vista, and hopefully when Vista RTM this version of the .NET Framework will be included. And it's nice to see that no Windows Genuine Advantage (SIC) registration is needed.

The base problem appears to be in the registry keys used by WLW is not correctly set to point to the new blogger beta. The posted workaround asks you to edit a registry key and change two references from www.blogger.com to beta.blogger.com. The key you are asked to navigate to is shown in the workaround post as HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Windows Live Writer\Weblogs\2e27accf-425c-4996-9c2d-a075aad9307a. The last part of this key is a GUID, which would appear to be unique for each blog. I have two blogger beta blogs located under the keys HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Windows Live Writer\Weblogs\0eacb7a7-5f1f-46e1-b434-95075a39fb30 and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Windows Live Writer\Weblogs\d11d04f4-ccb5-425c-98c7-272687d024d0.

The instructions should show the key(s) to edit as HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Windows Live Writer\Weblogs\[BLOG_ID] (where BLOG_ID is a GUID), as noted in the above post's comments! The remaining instructions work to the extent that they allow me to post to my blogs. After some testing, this post is written by WLW and if you can read it, has been posted properly.

There are two small issues with this workaround. First it does not fully resolve the issue with the web log update. If you click "View/Update Weblog Style...", WLW creates a temporary post in your blog and updates the style in WLW. This works, except that the temporary post is not deleted (although you can delete it manually).

Secondly, I am occasionally getting an exception error when trying to post. Here's the exception stack I just got when I tried to post this:

Monday, November 06, 2006

Microsoft has just released a series of virtual machine hard disks (VHDs). These VHDs are full evaluation products which are provided to help customers evaluate key MS products (including Windows Server R2, Exchange 2007 and SQL Server 2005). The VHD files are free, although not particularly small!
What a great idea! And thanks to Chris Randall for the pointer.
[Later]
The Windows Server Blog has more details about this programme.
Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows, Evaluation, Virtual Machine

Earlier today, I posted a comment on the Live Writer site. As noted in an earlier post here, Live Writer was broken by the latest Blogger Beta update. Just after the 10:00 News, I got a comment to this blog from the dev lead Charlie Teague apologising for the problem. Yes, they're aware of the issue and they're working on a fix and will get it out as fast as they can. I can't possibly ask more than that (although I would like a working Live Writer!).

Now this is good service. Other teams at MS should take notice. Particularly the team that runs the MCT sites.

In a recent article, I wrote about the new beta of Network Monitor 3. It's an awesome product that I'm slowly getting aroud to using and understanging. The Network Monitor team also have a blog which has some good articles on the new version of NetMon. If you are a network geek, get on the beta, download it, and start playing!

However, the latest version of Live Writer does not work with Google's new Blogger Beta which hosts my blogs). As described in a post in the Live Writer Blog: style detection fails and none of the posts you publish actually show up on the blog. A new build of Live Writer (the one noted in the above paragrah) has not solved the problem - in fact things seem worse. So if you are using the new Google blogging beta, you may want to hold off downloading Live Writer until the team issue a fix.
Please fix this Microsoft - and issue an updated build. Please??

In a fairly dramatic and last minute U-Turn, Microsoft has announced it is dropping some of the more draconian Vista licensing restrictions. In a recent entry on the Windows Vista blog, Nick White has revealed that plans to restrict licensed users to only being able to re-install Vista once have been lifted. Nick says "Our intention behind the original terms was genuinely geared toward combating piracy; however,it’s become clear to us that those original terms were perceived as adversely affecting an important group of customers: PC and hardware enthusiasts."

There are two aspects to this U-Turn, besides the welcome return of a degree of common sense in Redmond. First, the original idea would have simultaneously encouraged piracy and made Linux look even better which was probably not the intended result. Secondly, while giving way on the lunacy of restricting hobbyists and other PC enthuiasts, MS has NOT given way on the other tightening of Vista licensing. Some might argue that the original restriction was simply a stalking horse - to test the waters to see if the public would accept the tight restrictions. When public opinion, pretty much as predicted, went against the Redmond marketers, MS relented on this point, but not on the requirement for Volume Licensing copie of Vista to be activated (and regularly re-activated).

Product Activation is something prety much universally loathed by every sysadmin I know - and with that loathing comes a dislike of Microsoft (loathing by association, if you will). As one admin I know put it: "I dislike Redmond assuming I'm guilty until I spend a lot of time and effort proving otherwise. And sometimes, even when I'm not guilty, the anti-piracy code thinks otherwise!"

[Later]

I see comments have been disabled on this article on the Vista Team Blog. I guess they've had enough negative reaction. Turning off comments is one way to prevent further less than positive comments.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Robocopy is one of those utilities I use a lot for copying files across a network. It does what Xcopy et al doesn't - it handles network outages, and can be restarted. This makes it ideal for all sorts of copy uses. Robocopy is found inside the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit (a tool kit I install on all my systems). As Rodney Burke notes in his blog, Robocopy is a command line tool - but now there is a GUI. You can download Robocopy GUI here!

The download is an executable file that unzips to an MSI that you can then run. Yet another way of deploying software, but it works I suppose. The GUI is a little basic - and it sure helps if you know the switches for the Robocopy console command.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

I was brought up on the New Jersey shore - some of my earliest memories are of the beach. As kids we surfed a lot (mat, board and body). In surfing, there's the moment where the wave picks you up and you begin the journey after what can be a long wait. I feel a bit like that now with the Vista wave of products. I should call it EVO (Exchange, Vista and Office). EVO represents the three big ones, which have yet to RTM. But some of the other pieces in this puzzle have!

We've seen the release of both IE7 and Desktop search. IE7 is Vista's default browser, while Desktop Search is or particular importance to Outlook (and pretty cool). We've also seen Defender reach RTM. And we're seeing the start of Vista training. Microsoft has some early First Looks, while my firm, Global Knowledge, is running those, along full week classes on Vista across EMEA. And today, I saw the first advert for a "buy a new PC now and get Vista later" offer.

The Vista wave, and the Vista hype (aka marketing) machine are now cresting. After 5 years of incubation, the Vista wave ride is now beginning. It should prove to be an interesting time!

Monday, October 23, 2006

Microsoft has recently updated the Service Pack Road Map. Microsoft is committed to providing a 12 month roadmap of upcoming service packs and security rollup packages and these are describe on the Service Pack Roadmap page, which was updated late last week. The main change is that MS are delaying XP SP3 for around a year. SP3 had previously been planned for mid-2007, and is now shown as not being ready till mid 2008.

Two years between service packs is a long time (SP2 was released 2 years ago), but 4 years is a long time. The more cynical reader might argue this is one way to get users to upgrade to Vista, but that would be unfair. It's more likely that MS does not have the resources to both support Vista (and while not announced the almost certainly needed Vista SP1), complete/ship Longhorn and deal with an SP for XP.

In this regard, note the comment on the road map page: "Microsoft recommends that business customers use the above table to plan for the evaluation of new Service Packs as soon as they become available and to allow for the fastest possible transition time, in order to maintain all PCs on current service packs." Of course, is MS change a date by a year without any warning, I find it hard to see how this table can have much use except after the fact.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

RoundTable is the name for a new conferencing camera from Microsoft. This was discussed during a recent Live Communications Server Train the Trainer class in London. The basic idea is that this camera sits on a (round) table in a conference room, getting a 360 degree view of the room. It then displays pictures of the participants in a band at the bottom of a Live Meeting window. The cool part is that RoundTable works out who the speaker is (i.e. the person with the loudest voice) and presents them in a separate part of the screen.

This is pretty neat technology due to be sold for around US$3000, according to a Microsoft PressPass interview with Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Unified Communications Group. In the interview, Pall describes the device and how development is going. As I understand it, this device will be supported in the next version of LCS.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Like many in the IT industry, I use virtual machine technology for demonstrations, lectures and in classes, as well as to learn more about products in a safe environment. If you really screw up a VM, you can just recreate it, or roll back the changes to a known good state. I use VMware workstation on my home systems, as it's more efficient, more stable and has a richer set of functionality. I use Microsoft's VPC and VS products on my corporate laptop since I get so many VMs from MS that I need to use. One downside to using VMs is the size of the underlying virtual disks. A simple installation of, say, Windows Server R2 takes over 2GB in disk space. Multiply this by 10 (I have that many VMs on my laptop), and disk space quickly becomes an issue.

I've been testing the Invirtus VM Optimizer 2.5 on some of my VPC virtual hard disks - and I'm quite impressed by this product. Here are two data points from this afternoon's testing:

My core VPC VM is a forest root domain controller in my test and demonstration forest. VMO reduced the size of the hard disk from 2,644,648KB to 1,458,567KB – just under half the size.

The master VM Server R2 VM that I use to clone new VMs was next. This VM is setup, fully configured as a workgroup server with IIS and a few other services, and is ready to be sysprepped. The before size was 2,788,043kb, and the after size was 1,526, 167. Again a savings over 1GB.

As should be obvious, shrinking a VM by 1GB makes for enormous savings in disk space, make transfers (from backup hard disk to main system, or from a laptop to classroom computers, etc) much much faster.

Now the less than good news:

VDO does not work on Vista VMs. I’ve got a Vista RC1 VM that does not compress. The error message is a tad misleading – it says that the ability to compress Vista won’t come till Vista goes RC. But I’m running it on RC1!

VDO Does not support difference disks. This is a real issue for me in my day job - where use Microsoft provided VMs as part of MOC training courses. The MOC course 7034A (Live Communications Server 2005) for example uses 18 VMs based on difference disks. These take up a total of around 35gb. If the results here were what we saw with stand alone disks, this would be compelling evidence for use in justifying a site license.

The price is high - US$169 for a single user version, and US$591 for a 5-user version.

So while there is a bit of bad news, this package is fantastic for those of us who use independent VMs for testing and demo purposes. If you build and use VMs on a regular basis, you should have this tool. But don't take my word for it - go to their download site and get the evaluation version. The evaluation version is fully functional, but timebombs after 14 days.

Monday, October 16, 2006

According to Beta News, Microsoft is close to releasing an ODF plugin for Word. The article says the plug-in, which can read ODF but not save in ODF initially, is due for release on Oct 23. To some degree this support is a huge about-face from Redmond. But it's a sensible move and goes a long way to stifling some criticism.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

I've installed Vista RC2 over the weekend. The installation was relatively painless, and pretty much everything seems to work. However, I still do not think it ready for release. I have four reasons for this view:

There is a lack of working anti-virus packages for Vista. Trend does have a package and One-Care (folks in the UK get a giggle saying this fast!) appears to be available, but where is the choice? The lack of a usable anti-virus package is a major concern to corporates. We use Network Associates Virusscan and would prefer to continue using it.

PowerShell does not install. Now this may seem a curious point - but we are being told that the reason PowerShell can't install is due to the new installer. The PowerShell installation, so far as I can see, does three things: copies a few files to \system32, adds a few reg keys, and runs ngen to install the PowerShell binaries into the GAC. Hardly rocket science - but if one of the smartest teams at Microsoft can not get this stuff to work, mere mortals have no hope.

Turnpike is not stable under Vista. Turnpike is a mail and news program heavily used in the UK. Produced by Demon, the UK's first major ISP and still one of the larger ones, Turnpike is a great package. But the reader part, which is implemented as a shell extension, GPFs all over the place. This is a package that works very well under Windows NT4, Windows 2000 and XP (RTM, sp1 and sp2), but is highly unstable under every Vista build issued to beta testers this year. I can't get it to stay up for more than a few minutes before a crash (which typically then requires a full rebuild of my mail/news databases to start working again). This is simply unacceptable and I am running XP SP2 on my laptop.

The Vofafone 3g data card drivers do not work. I rely on this card for connectivity and need to dual boot back to XP for support. For core connectivity like this, lack of support is a huge negative for corporates.

These are just four pointers - the lack of antivirus must be a huge negative for corporates. Why would any large company want to deploy an OS without a working AV program? The new installer is a support nightmare waiting to happen, as it means customers can not install Exchange 2007 tools on Vista. If programs like Turnpike are so unstable, what else is going to break? And finally, for a lot of corporate customers, tools like the Vodafone 3G data card are mission critical. All in all, these issues point to an OS that, however good, is not ready for corporate use.

MS has made great strides in improving Vista, and it is pretty close to being useable. I genuinely want to run it on my day to day machines. But I can't. At the end of the day, Vista is not ready - but seemingly Redmond have only one objective, which is to ship it. Ready or not MS appear to be willing to ship this puppy.

My advice to my corporate customers is to get to know Vista - go on the training and start experimenting once RTM occurs. Treat Vista RTM as the Beta 3 that MS should have declared and act accordingly (i.e. don't deploy big time). Wait instead for both the the consumer versions ship (e.g. what should be called an early SP1) and consider installing then.

Monday, October 09, 2006

In an article in Small Business, James Gaskin estimates that Windows Vista is likely to cost USD$3.5k-$5k per user. Of course, this includes the upgrade to Office 2007, but also for new hardware. This seems very high to me, but Gaskin defends his views here.

With just a few days to go till MS declare Vista Gold, this can not be great news. Many readers will know that MS released RC2 late last Friday. I have it running on my laptop, but only as a test - I'm back to XP for day to day use. Sadly. The reason why is simple: my main mail and news reader, Turnpike does not work well - it continually crashes (requiring an entire re-build of the mail and news databases and the address book. I also appear to have lost mail, which is not acceptable.

If I have a choice between a working mail /news client and the latest RC from MS, there is no question which I'll take. I want to use Vista, but it's just not stable enough with my set of apps. I continue to believe it's not ready for release - and my advice to our customers is that while they should investigate it, and get to know it, they should wait for SP1 to move into volume deployment. Not a popular bit of advice in Redmond sadly.

I've been testing out the TechNet Virtual Labs for Live Communications Server. The idea is great: you go to a web site, click a few links and you have some "real" machines to lay with. The machines are of course Microsoft VM's, based on Virtual Server. The nice thing is that they're all loaded and pretty much all you need is a web browser to access them.

The principal downside, at least today, is performance. They are VERY slow. It took around 45-seconds just to get Active Directory Users and Computers up and running. The VM seems to go dead - clicking on the VMRC client has no effect for long periods of time (30 sec - 1 min). To just add a user, and install LCS 2005 SE took nearly 35 minutes - most of which was waiting for response from the VM farm.

Another issue is the tools and the ports they require. Unfortunately, there is a combination of Java, Flash, and other tools, some of which require "non-standard" ports to be opened at the firewall.I am working with one client who has issues around opening seemingly random ports.

So while the idea is great, the performance is slow. And you need a fairly open firewall which is increasingly a rarity in today's security conscious world.

[LATER]

To add insult to injury, I attempted to provide feedback. Clicking on the Take The Virtual Labs Satisfaction Survey button produced: Microsoft Events is currently experiencing technical difficulties. Please check back with us later. If you believe you have received this message in error, please contact Microsoft Events Support. :0(

Shimafuji, a Japanese company, has created an amazingly tiny computer, as described over on the Mind Blogging Stuff site. This computer measures 2"x2x2.5", contains a 300 MHz processor and uses a 64MB SDram card (which doubles as the hard disk). It also has a number of ports, including USB< Ethernet RS232 and a 1280x1024 Video connector. Naturally, with space to tight, this box does not run Windows, but runs a version of Linux. Still, it's pretty neat!

I've just moved this blog over to the new Blogger Beta. Maybe a dangerous thing to do, but we'll see!

[Later]

The integration between Blogger beta and Live Writer is not perfect - LW could not download the styles from Blogger. I had to reset the Live Writer settings for the blogs and in doing so, I can't seem to download the blog's styles into Live Writer. I can still post, which is probably good enough.

Sunbelt Software is running a poll on likely adoption rates of Exchange 2007. The Exchange 2007 adoption poll attempts to validate Gartner claims that adoption of Exchange 2007 will only begin in 2008, with the installed base reaching 40% in 2010. Personally, I think that adoption will be faster than Gartner suggests, and the early numbers in this Sunbelt Software poll seem to show that.